Last week marked a watershed for technology startups in India, as a record bout of fundraising shifted attention to the world’s second-most populous market, just as investors were becoming spooked by a crackdown on internet companies in China.
Food-delivery app Zomato Ltd. became the nation’s first unicorn to make its stock-market debut, raising $1.3 billion with backing from Morgan Stanley, Tiger Global and Fidelity Investments. The parent of digital payments startup Paytm filed a draft prospectus for what could be India’s biggest IPO at $2.2 billion, while retailer Flipkart Online Services Pvt. raised $3.6 billion at a $38 billion valuation, a record funding round for an Indian startup.
"Indian entrepreneurs have been quietly building startups for a decade now, the country’s internet infrastructure has vastly improved in that time and there’s a very good appetite for tech stocks globally,” said Hans Tung, the Silicon Valley-based managing partner of GGV Capital, which manages $9.2 billion in assets. "Investors are beginning to see the huge upside and they expect India to be a China.”